Feel that. It is one of those, “you gotta be kidding me” things until it becomes a “no effing kidding” thing. But VERY much dependent on system/power etc.
I think one of the things that is creeping into my consciousness recently is the firsthand experience of the AC cable on what most consider to be the “last” bit of the AC line, turning into the “first” bit. Counter-intuitive, I admit.
All I can say is that I hear it. That’s all I care about, frankly🤷🏻♂️
This is not to say that every “better” AC cable plugged into any given device will result in some magical transformation in your sound. It is like most things in this game. Gotta listen. And some things make sense sonically and economically, and others don’t.
I am certain that my THD problem is not from my home.
I turned off all the breakers but one and ran the P12 with no load.
The THD is always varying between 6.8 and 8.1% depending on the
time of day / week. The low distortion setting is always chosen.
(I’ve been an amateur radio operator for 50 years and have done this
many times searching for noise.)
I have a 5kw rated isolation transformer that I’m retrieving from storage after a very long pause. When last used I had a Carver magnetic field amp. That amp severely distorted the AC sine wave. But on the primary side utilizing my isolation transformer the sine wave looked intact. Without that transformer the Carver would pollute the AC line throughout the house.
My next step is running 240V 6-3 Romex into my living room utilizing my isolation transformer. Electricians are very busy around here.
I asked Paul about hypothetically using Power Plants in series. He said it might be overkill but yes, he said go for it (hypothetically), because a Power Plant performs best when connected with the lowest output impedance which obviously is well achieved with another Power Plant!
So this would improve performance, I trust Paul knows his product well enough to not suggest something superfluous.
Happy to know if someone would test for instance what happens if a P15 (with plugged most part of components, subs, M1200s amps, BHK preamps, SPP and TT) was fed by a P12 (HC outlet I suppose) where in addiction are plugged also some digital gears (DS DAC, PST and in future AirLens maybe).
Wall socket => P12 (digital) => P15 (analog)
Compared to
One single Wall socket => P12 (digital) + Another different Wall socket => P15 (analog)
I’m asking because this solution (using the P12 as a “strip/distributor/regenerator”) would permit both:
feeding the entire system by a unique wall socket (dedicated line) and not 2 or more
implementing for EU Schuko models the number of available sockets in general: 9 outlets of P15 (2 HC for 2 subs and 6 for amps M1200s and the rest of analog rig) plus 4 outlets of P12 (1 HC for P15 in chain and 3 for the rest of digital rig)
Any volunteer here on the forum or some guys from PS Audio team (@jamesh) able to do experiment? Improvements in SQ and/or cleaning AC to test.
Or at least it would clarify the importance of avoid this solution if not safe or not worth it at all nor for 120V neither 230V typology.
The efficiency is over 85%, it should be safe. (Then again if you meant if the P12 can handle the P15 with those loads, dunno) The P15 would perform better with the low output impedance of a preceding power plant.
But yes, would be great if someone with two power plants tried this. The possible difference in SQ might be more pronounced due to this decoupling of digital and analog gear (since power plants aren’t entirely cross-contamination protected) than the output impedance benefit. Well we’d have both anyway but still the distinction is interesting because apparently amplifiers reflect a double of the amplified spectrum back into the socket so considering the lot of them on the P15 this amalgam of reflections wouldn’t get to the digital components. So it’s a two-way isolation benefit, the general consensus is about digital components being noisy, as they are, but here it’s good to know that amplifiers are this way noisy onto the line too, not RF but we don’t want kilohertz reflections either.
(Couldn’t find the source for this, it was a Siltech interview where it was explained shortly)
Now I certainly am not sure of the level of decoupling since power plants are amplifiers but since they have the step of regeneration, I’m assuming they don’t let so much unwanted reflections backwards.
Ages ago Darren told me this wouldn’t be a good idea. One wouldn’t harm anything, you’re just adding more links to the chain which isn’t going to help your case.
Would there really not be any benefit to driving a power plant with the minuscule output impedance of another one? Since power plants’ performance is impacted by power cords, isn’t the output impedance of the socket it’s connected to of some importance too?
Sure, the very point of them is to get great performance from any socket and I realize this is overkill but since this is high-end audio we’re dealing with…
I did this, got my own transformer and dedicated line from transformer to house, and it was about $80,000.00 by the time it was all said and done. At least here in Denton, TX. Keep that in mind.